See, this is why I don’t blog anymore. I’ve been away from this blog for FOUR months and old posts still continue to get spam comments from idiots who know nothing about SEO. You silly little people. You use whatever spam program you have to post massive blog comments but anyone that has to approve comments is not going to let them go through. Not only that, they have absolutely nothing to do with your website and they’re highly devalued by Google anyway. So you’re not only wasting your time (which I gather isn’t very valuable if you’re trying to sell generic medicine on your crappy websites anyway) but you’re wasting my time because I have to go through and bulk spam report these comments. In fact just right now as I’m writing this some idiot is trying to get a link back to his forex site. Fantastic.

*sigh*

I’ve been inactive for a while now, and I apologize for that. I hope your popularity hasn’t suffered too much : )
Anyway, if you’re curious to know where I’ve been, you’ll be interested to hear. I was invited to try out a new social network - urThots - which is all about writing whatever you’re thinking and finding other people that think the same way through tags.

So far, I’m really loving it. It’s invite only right now, but if you’re interested, I might be able to get you an invite down the road. Leave a comment and post your e-mail if you want to see what other people are thinking - and stay tuned for more information as I continue to review the site.

As you develop numbers of friends, followers, fans, or what have you in your various social networking ventures, it is important to keep in mind the barrier between that world and real life. It is great to interact with large numbers of people of high status on Facebook. It is not great to talk about it in person. It is ideal to have plenty of Twitter followers, having notables like Seth McFarlane, or any number of musicians or famous people, tweeting with you. It is not ideal to boast about it during your endeavors to become popular in the real world.

Exceptions can be made. If you are discussing those things with other people who do the exact same thing, and find it interesting, then it is appropriate to talk about. Generally, naturally popular people don’t feel the desire to talk about internet popularity in real life.

The easiest way to start getting friends on MySpace is to join Adder Demon.

http://www.adderdemon.com/

After joining, it allows you to request over 100,000 people be your friend very quickly. These people have already joined Adder Demon, so they are in the market for more friends. They will gladly accept your friend requests. Then, after you add the thousands of people, you can browse their profiles and start to add their friends, and you can keep doing this until you have virtually unlimited friends.

Remember, you’re trying to make actual friends here, not just trying to amass a huge number. Talk to the people. View their profiles, and see what they like. If you have something in common, talk about it with them.

After finding all your old chums, where do you go next? Well, you can peruse your friends’ friend lists, and see if you know anyone there (or see if you have any interest in meeting anyone there).

Here’s some great resources for getting a ton of friends on Facebook:

http://personalweb.about.com/od/makefriendsonfacebook/Make_Friends_on_Facebook.htm

There’s groups to join, tricks to try. Once you get the ball rolling, it’s non stop.

I recommend though, not going too fast, as you could get in trouble with the admins. And try to actually connect with the people you befriend, otherwise you’re just wasting time. You can make connections, find out what’s going on in your area, and meet new people in real life.

How does making friends online at social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter differ from making friends offline? Well, although it has its differences, there are definitely similarities. In the upcoming weeks, I’ll talk about some ways to:

• Make friends on MySpace
• Make friends on Facebook
• Get views on YouTube videos you upload
• Get followers on Twitter
• Get your friends to actively participate in your profiles
• Use social networks to boost your social life offline
• Avoid being annoying on social networks
• Avoid having your online social life negatively effect your offline social life
• Use the social networks to make friends offline

After learning all this, you’ll be ready to be as popular online as you’re going to be offline. Stay tuned…

When I was in college, I met this girl. We became friends, and everything was perfectly dandy. Then, as we got to know each other, I decided to try something new. Whenever she asked a question about myself, I never gave her anything, at least not the first time she asked. I would jokingly respond, and she would plead with me to just tell her a straight answer. This went on for quite a while, and the girl seemed to get increasingly interested in me.

Why?

Because I was like a Christmas present. She had to tear through my jocular answers like wrapping paper just to see what was underneath. Think about it: Would Christmas presents be as great if they were just out in the open, with no mystery? No, half the fun is opening the present and finding out what’s inside. True.

This goes hand in hand with not sharing your political affiliation. All too often, when people ask something about you, they do not care about your answer. Not only will they likely forget what you said just moments later, they’re almost always just forcing small talk. Sure, small talk is sometimes a necessary evil, but just buying into it will not make you stand apart from others.  How can you change this?

By not giving a serious answer when someone asks you a question about yourself.

Now, you have to be sure that you keep a straight face no matter what you say. Otherwise, youwon’t get the full benefits of the soft sarcasm. After you give a non serious answer, you’ll get one of three responses:

1. The person will get that you are joking (if you made it obvious enough) and laugh
2. The person will nod and then do a double take, as if to check if you were serious without asking
3. The person will go on their merry way, oblivious to your creativity (avoid these people)
4. The person will take you seriously, and act surprised at your resposnse

Each of these responses, save for the oblivious nit wit from number 3 will almost always have the same inadverdent response: The person stopping to say, “No, seriously!”

It’s at that point that you have made a positive impression and established yourself as interesting in the asker’s eyes. Not only that, but they are expressing interest in you by pressing the question and asking a second time, which raises your value in their subconscious. They are taking extra time beyond the forced-small-talk-just-passing-in-the-hall time they had committed to you earlier.

The last benefit is that the person might actually remember your serious answer, or at the very least remember that you are clever. Both leading to popularity increase.

One of the easiest ways to become popular and make a lot of friends is to introduce yourself and talk to every single person you come across, whether you’re in school, working, or a hermit.

Think about it.

If everyone knows you by name, that’s a form of soft popularity. That’s only one tiny step away from full on popularity, where everyone not only knows you by name, they also like you.

But talking to everyone is the hard part, isn’t it? How do you do that?

Well, from what I’ve seen and done, it all comes down to just being friendly and confident. If you smile and calmly introduce yourself to anyone, chances are, it will go pretty decently. Of course, you can’t always just start with, “Hi.” Actually, don’t ever start with the word, “Hi,” or any derivation thereof. That greeting no longer works.

Think back to the last stranger that approached you with, “Hi.”

Didn’t you feel like they were about to sell you something? The truth is, they were trying to sell you something. They were trying to sell you themselves. We’ve gotten to the point where we can detect salesmen a mile away, and we instinctively get suspicious. If you make people that you’re trying to meet suspicious, you’ve already made things a lot more difficult for yourself. And you don’t need difficulty right now. So try something new.

What currently is effective when trying to introduce yourself to people without setting off their salesmen detectors is opening with a comment or observation. Not only does this catch them off guard, it thrusts you into the conversation immediately. No awkward greeting. No pretending that you want to know how they’re doing. Just two strangers having a pleasant conversation.

So what kinds of things can you comment on?

This is where it can be tricky, but with practice, it becomes extremely natural. The easiest way to strike up a conversation out of the blue is by paying attention to your surroundings and making an observation. For example, if you’re at the gas station pumping gas, you can make a comment about the person’s car next to you. People love to talk about their cars. If you’re waiting in line at a coffee shop, try to talk about the book the person in line next to you is holding. People in coffee shops always have books, trust me. Pretend like you’ve read the book or are interested in reading it. Just be aware of what’s going on around you, and smile and be confident. This really can’t be stressed enough. If you do not smile and appear nervous, you will just make everyone within 40 feet of you feel very uncomfortable. People can sense nervousness just as well as they can sense salesmen. And there is nothing worse than a nervous salesman.

Now, if you’re looking for a romantic interest, you have to switch things up a little. The common observations usually do not work as well in this case, because you don’t want to come off as looking harmless. You want to look harmful and dangerous. Exciting. Mysterious. Interesting. So what do you talk about then? Make a comment about the person. When you make it personal, it instantly escalates things past the harmless “potential friend.” Then you’re well on your way. And remember, you have to be confident here. Even the slightest bit of self doubt will RUIN you. You’ll be blacklisted forever.

So if you follow this advice religously, not only will every single person know who you are, your potential romantic interests will see you as James Bond.

What’s my political affiliation?

I’ll never tell.

And neither should you, if you want to keep stay popular. Why is this the case? Certain people like to write you off the minute they know you don’t carry the same label as them, regardless of what you think. If you want to avoid pointless political arguments that never go anywhere, you’ll do well to heed this advice. People that focus on labels rather than the underlying implications don’t understand compromise, and so the only way to keep in their good graces is to not let them put a label on you (because sooner or later, you will have the wrong label).

Remember, we’re trying to get as many friends as possible here, not trying to express our individuality or trying to command attention by being unique.

I have been following this prinicipal for some time now, and it’s worked amazingly for me. Perhaps the best benefit, even better than avoiding all the heated arguments, is that people can’t apply their “disagreement filter” to you if they can’t label you. What I mean by this is that when people put their lables all over you, the labels basically tell them to listen when you speak (if the label is the same as theirs) or to just plain ignore you when you speak (if they labeled you differently than themselves). In other words, if someone knows that you have a different political stance than they do, they will devalue your opinion and not take what you have to take seriously. You could be saying the most thoughtful, genious idea that would benefit the entire world, and they would have already spaced out. Heck, you could even be expressing an opinion that directly lines up with their own, but it wouldn’t matter. You have lost before you begun.

Another thing people will do after labeling you is assume that they know your opinion on everything from that point on. They know what other people with your label think, so you obviously think the same way. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want anyone assuming they know how I think about any given issue. You have to ask me what I think, because the answer is usually a lot more complicated than the labeled people will have you believe.

So don’t let people label you. And the easiest way to prevent this is to not label yourself.

We’ve just joined Facebook and Myspace, in efforts to stay connected with all the people out there who truly desire to be popular!

Check us out on Facebook at my profile page: Mark Sinclair and be a fan of us at our Be Super Popular page!

Visit us on our MySpace page at myspace.com/besuperpopular.

Send us a friend request, ask us questions, or just stop by and say hi on our wall. Look forward to hearing from you.